The Fry Chronicles Part 9

After the New End came Australia. In honour of Ian Botham's epic summer of genius we gave our revue the t.i.tle Botham, the Musical Botham, the Musical. It is not often that there is enough British salt or a big enough Australian wound for the one to be rubbed into the other, so it seemed like an appropriate and attention-grabbing name for the show.

Australia in the early eighties was a revelation to me. I had expected a backwater: yellow-cellophaned shop windows displaying orange tank-tops and ten-year-old transistor radios, drunken h.o.m.ophobic, pommy-bas.h.i.+ng Ockers, winged-gla.s.ses-wearing Edna Everages and a sour atmosphere of cultural cringe, inferiority-complex rodomontade and tall-poppy resentment. Not even the greatest Australophile could deny that those elements did and still do exist, but they were and are by no means predominant. I found Australia to be a country of matchlessly high-quality and low-cost food and wine and vibrating with an optimistic prosperity that contrasted vividly with Britain's miseries of recession, rioting and IRA bombings. The affluence and confidence astonished me. The bright outdoorsy climate seemed to be echoed in the national mood just as Britain's grey, chilly pessimism so perfectly matched its relentlessly unappetizing weather. I could not know that Britain's mood was set to change.

Botham, the Musical opened in Perth, and we worked our way across the continent, spending most of our earnings in restaurants. I learnt in Australia to love crayfish and oysters: oysters raw, oysters Rockefeller, oysters Kilpatrick and oysters Casino. At Doyle's seafood restaurant, which I still visit whenever I am in Sydney, I discovered barramundi and those strange lobster-like creatures the Moreton Bay and Balmain Bugs. This was also the first time I had ever seen wine sold varietally, where the bottles displayed the name of the grape variety, rather than the chateau, estate or domain of origin. This is so accepted now as to be unworthy of notice. Only the Old World clings to its Barolo, Bordeaux and Mosel labellings everywhere else you know from one glance at the bottle that the wine is made of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo or Riesling. Having said which, thirty years later it is clear that easy familiarity with varieties has not entirely penetrated Britain. I saw an edition of opened in Perth, and we worked our way across the continent, spending most of our earnings in restaurants. I learnt in Australia to love crayfish and oysters: oysters raw, oysters Rockefeller, oysters Kilpatrick and oysters Casino. At Doyle's seafood restaurant, which I still visit whenever I am in Sydney, I discovered barramundi and those strange lobster-like creatures the Moreton Bay and Balmain Bugs. This was also the first time I had ever seen wine sold varietally, where the bottles displayed the name of the grape variety, rather than the chateau, estate or domain of origin. This is so accepted now as to be unworthy of notice. Only the Old World clings to its Barolo, Bordeaux and Mosel labellings everywhere else you know from one glance at the bottle that the wine is made of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo or Riesling. Having said which, thirty years later it is clear that easy familiarity with varieties has not entirely penetrated Britain. I saw an edition of The Weakest Link The Weakest Link not so long ago where, to the question 'What are Merlot, s.h.i.+raz and Chardonnay?', the contestant offered the answer 'Footballers' wives?' not so long ago where, to the question 'What are Merlot, s.h.i.+raz and Chardonnay?', the contestant offered the answer 'Footballers' wives?'

Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Albury Wodonga were all ticked off the itinerary before it was time to return to a snowy December England. We broke the journey in Singapore, staying for two nights at Raffles Hotel, where we ran out of money.

Clash of Cultures I am back in London. I ride on the Underground and grip the chromium rail to steady myself. The contrast between my brown hand and the paper-white English ones alongside astonishes me. I am in the Tube travelling to Notting Hill. I am on my way to a meeting at a flat in Pembridge Place that will change my life.

For the most part Australia had seemed to take to our comedy. We were just a band of students playing in smallish venues, and it was neither overwhelming triumph nor humiliating disaster. We were presenting material that was now nearly a year old: the Dracula monologue, the Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s, the Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett sketch, songs, sketches and quickies that we knew backwards. I remember Martin telling us that we would still be doing them in ten years' time. I blush to reveal that I performed Dracula for a charity show in Winchester just three months ago, a full twenty-nine years after I wrote it. But if, and it was an if as wide as the distance between Sydney and London, we were to make a professional go of comedy, it would mean writing new material, it would mean attempting to make a mark in a new comedy world.

With Emma in 'My Darling' a Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning sketch.

In 1981 a great schism had apparently started to open up in the jolly world of humorous entertainment. I cannot recall when I first heard the phrase 'alternative comedy' but I do clearly remember seeing Alexei Sayle on television during my last year at Cambridge. Reeling and jerking like a puppet, crammed a la Tommy Cooper into a double-breasted suit a size too small, sucking in breath through his teeth, Sayle raged brilliantly about posey middle-cla.s.s liberals. I subsequently learnt that his best lines were actually from the resolutely middle-cla.s.s privately educated lawyer and Cambridge Footlights alumnus Clive Anderson, but that is not to take away the impact Sayle had. The tireless and surreal rants, all spat out in a Liverpudlian accent you could grate cheese with, combined with the look of a swarthy silent-movie villain made him funny, frightening and impossible to ignore, a kind of anarcho-syndicalist John Belus.h.i.+ but Lithuanian, Jewish and rebarbative where Belus.h.i.+ was Albanian, Orthodox and cuddly. When I first met him I was made acutely aware that I represented everything he most despised: public school, Cambridge and, due to that manner that I have never been able to shake off, Establishment. Prejudice and sn.o.bbery appear to be considered legitimate in that direction: if I had despised him for being the working-cla.s.s, state-school son of a communist railway worker, I should have been rightly condemned. In those days you were proud of being working-cla.s.s and ashamed of being middle-cla.s.s. I was desperate to be proud of being no cla.s.s, of being decla.s.se decla.s.se and and deracine deracine, of being bohemian-cla.s.s, eternal-student-cla.s.s, artist-cla.s.s. I missed all those by a mile and continue to this day to reek more of the Garrick Club than the Groucho Club, but that has never stopped me trying, in my doomed, futile and pointless way, to be free. We all have our strange ways of coping, or failing to cope. Over the years I got on perfectly politely and almost amiably with Alexei and his wife, Linda, but I am afraid I have never really forgiven him for his bullying unkindness and aggression towards Ben Elton. By the end of the decade and throughout the nineties he missed no opportunity to take pot-shots at Ben, unjustly accusing him of being somehow inauthentic, derivative and abjectly unworthy of the label comedian or alternative. Well, all that came later, and I dare say he has calmed down now: the point is that, for a short few years, Sayle stood out as the most visible symbol of this new movement and at the time of our return from Australia the world appeared to belong to him and his cohorts.

I am not by nature a pessimist but I did wonder if the door had closed on types like us. Comedy is, as everyone knows, all about timing, and I feared that in the career sense our comic timing was way off. Not the Nine O'Clock News Not the Nine O'Clock News, with three Oxbridge performers, its ex-Footlights producer John Lloyd and its Oxford chief writer Richard Curtis was surely the last hurrah of our kind. And good riddance, the world was saying. What punk had done for music the alternative comedians were doing for comedy. The cla.s.sic 'Ah Perkins, come in, sit down' comic sketch would be swept away along with the tuck box and the old school tie. This is how it seemed to us in our darker moments. I am now fully aware of a fact that will be obvious to you but of which back then I was only dimly conscious, so easy it is to believe that events, history and circ.u.mstances conspire uniquely against one. While we may have feared what we feared you can be sure that squadrons of comedians waiting in the wings had quite contrary anxieties. They looked at a BBC dominated by Oxbridge graduates who all appeared to read the same books and newspapers, talk the same way, refer to the same arcane experiences and share the same tastes. There was no Channel 4 at this point, no cable, no satellite, just BBC1, BBC2, BBC radio. A single ITV channel offered variety shows and the last heroes of the great musical-hall tradition in comedians like Benny Hill, Morecambe and Wise and Tommy Cooper as well as sitcoms that, with the glorious exception of Rising Damp Rising Damp, were unmemorable, unoriginal and uninspiring. If you were from neither an Oxbridge nor a variety background I can quite see how Fortress Broadcasting must have appeared una.s.sailable. From such a point of view Emma, Hugh and I would have looked like pampered n.o.blesse for whom the portcullis was respectfully raised, the banner hoisted and fires lit in the great hall. It is perhaps unseemly to emphasize how far from true we felt this to be, but unseemly emphasis is pardonable. Indeed, at just this time, Margaret Thatcher was making unseemly emphasis her signature oratorical mode, and the decade itself prepared for cheekbones, big hair, shoulder pads, political division and conspicuous consumption all to be emphasized in as unseemly a manner as could be managed. Unseemly emphasis was in the air and nowhere more so than in the comedians muttering and ma.s.sing outside the castle gates.

Peter Rosengard, a life insurance salesman with a penchant for cigars and Claridge's breakfasts, had visited the Comedy Store in America and in 1979, together with Don Ward, a comic who specialised in warming up rock and roll crowds, he had launched the London Comedy Store, a small room above a topless bar in Walker's Court, Soho. Already by 1981 the Comedy Store had come to stand for this whole nouvelle vague nouvelle vague in comedy a movement that coincided with the sharp style of the listings magazine in comedy a movement that coincided with the sharp style of the listings magazine Time Out Time Out and its achingly leftist breakaway rival and its achingly leftist breakaway rival City Limits City Limits, a movement that tapped the discontent and desire for difference of a student generation emerging into a recession-hit, Tory-controlled, anxious and angry Britain. Squadrons of young middle-cla.s.s revolutionaries wore out the grooves of London Calling London Calling, talked the talk of gender politics and walked the walk of CND and Rock Against Racism. It is not to be wondered that they were unsatisfied with the comedy of Are You Being Served? Are You Being Served?, The Russ Abbott Madhouse The Russ Abbott Madhouse and and Never the Twain Never the Twain.

The house of entertainment was comprised of two families: the traditional, to which d.i.c.k Emery, Mike Yarwood, the Two Ronnies, Bruce Forsyth and the above-mentioned immortals Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper belonged, and the graduate, that dynasty started by Peter Cook, which swelled to its full greatness under Monty Python and was now coming to a full stop, or so we feared, with the Not Not team of John Lloyd, Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Oxbridgers all. Was the new comedy represented by Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, French and Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Keith Allen and the many others bubbling under an alternative to the first family or to the second? Well, more to the second in fact, despite the background chatter of the times which made out that it was all a cla.s.s war. Alexei Sayle went to Chelsea Art College and was the most Pythonesque of all the comedians with his streams of absurdist surreality and deliberately recondite frames of reference. French and Saunders met at drama school. Elton, Edmondson and Mayall had all been students at Manchester University together. The truth is that very few of the first wave of alternative comedians could claim to have got their education from the streets or the school of hard knocks; in fact as an old lag team of John Lloyd, Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Oxbridgers all. Was the new comedy represented by Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, French and Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Keith Allen and the many others bubbling under an alternative to the first family or to the second? Well, more to the second in fact, despite the background chatter of the times which made out that it was all a cla.s.s war. Alexei Sayle went to Chelsea Art College and was the most Pythonesque of all the comedians with his streams of absurdist surreality and deliberately recondite frames of reference. French and Saunders met at drama school. Elton, Edmondson and Mayall had all been students at Manchester University together. The truth is that very few of the first wave of alternative comedians could claim to have got their education from the streets or the school of hard knocks; in fact as an old lag I I might be said to be the most real and hard of any of them, a thought preposterous enough to show that the idea of there being a group of working-cla.s.s comics threatening Castle Poncey was really quite misguided. All the comedians were from the same mix of backgrounds as ever, and there was plenty of old-school silly sketch comedy among the angry edgy stand-up. It is true that there was an alternative might be said to be the most real and hard of any of them, a thought preposterous enough to show that the idea of there being a group of working-cla.s.s comics threatening Castle Poncey was really quite misguided. All the comedians were from the same mix of backgrounds as ever, and there was plenty of old-school silly sketch comedy among the angry edgy stand-up. It is true that there was an alternative audience audience who were ready for something different, and their demand for the new might be said to have released the energy that was now being called 'alternative'. Some years later Barry Cryer gave the best definition of alternative comedians I have yet to hear. 'They're the same only they don't play golf.' who were ready for something different, and their demand for the new might be said to have released the energy that was now being called 'alternative'. Some years later Barry Cryer gave the best definition of alternative comedians I have yet to hear. 'They're the same only they don't play golf.'

If this was the Zeitgeist Zeitgeist then it was frankly miraculous that our Cambridge Footlights show had won the Perrier Award and that I was now stepping off a Tube train and looking for that address in Pembridge Place. then it was frankly miraculous that our Cambridge Footlights show had won the Perrier Award and that I was now stepping off a Tube train and looking for that address in Pembridge Place.

I rang the doorbell and was buzzed in to an upstairs flat. Hugh, Emma and Paul Shearer were already present. Jon Plowman, whose flat it was, was busy with coffee cups. He was the pert young Englishman from Granada we had met at Edinburgh. Sandy Ross, the pink-faced producer who had been with him that night, introduced me to a dark-haired spectacled young fellow of earnest aspect.

'This is Ben Elton, he has just graduated from Manchester.'

Sandy outlined his plan: that those of us a.s.sembled should form ourselves into a team of writerperformers and create a new comedy show for Granada Television. We were to write and rehea.r.s.e here in London and then go up to film and record at the studios in Manchester. Ben was already in the middle of collaborating with his university friend Rik Mayall and Rik's girlfriend, Lise Mayer, on the writing of a new comedy series for the BBC, a kind of anti-sitcom that had the working t.i.tle The Young Ones. The Young Ones. We, for our part, were also committed to the BBC, not for a series but just to record We, for our part, were also committed to the BBC, not for a series but just to record The Cellar Tapes for a one-off transmission. for a one-off transmission.

The idea behind the new Granada show, Sandy Ross explained, was to combine the traditional world of Cambridge sketch-writing with the anarchic, edgy style (he used those words) of Ben, his confreres and all that they represented. Since there were four of us and only one of him, the plan was to bring in At Least Someone Else of a non-Cambridge flavour. The names Chris Langham, Nick le Prevost and Alfred Molina were floated, and perhaps others that I do not recall. Another girl was also required. For a time there was the possibility that it might be the Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead. She came to a rehearsal, I recall, was clearly not impressed with what she found and declined to be involved. Instead Sandy and Jon found a perky young actress, also Scottish, called Siobhan Redmond. In time most of the men in the production were destined to fall for her, myself included in my own peculiar way.

In the meantime, we were tasked to go forth and write.

As I look back through the years at that period of my life, occluded, discoloured and scratched by time, experience and all the ravages and abuses to which my poor mind and body were since subjected, it all seems so improbable, and for reasons that make no obvious sense, so very, very sad. It was nothing of the kind, of course, it was slightly frightening but deliriously thrilling.

Without ever expressing it in any deliberate or calculated way I think Hugh and I understood that we were some kind of a team. Not a double act, but somehow inevitably and eternally linked. The worry uppermost in my mind, the one that I dared not communicate to Hugh, or Emma or Kim or anyone else, was whether or not I was in any way funny. I think I was confident that I was witty witty, that I was a.s.sured, articulate and verbally dextrous with a pen in my hand or a typewriter keyboard beneath my fingers, but between funny and witty falls the shadow ...

I believed that being funny, being able to cause laughter through expression, movement and that mysterious palpable, physical something something that is given to some and not to others was a gift similar to athleticism, musicality and s.e.x appeal. In other words it had something to do with a self-confidence with the body that I had never had, a self-confidence that allowed physical relaxation and ease that themselves seemed to generate more self-confidence. This was the source of all my troubles. Fear of the games field, fear of the dance floor, athletic inept.i.tude, s.e.xual shyness, lack of coordination and grace, hatred of my face and body. This could be traced all the way back to kindergarten Music and Movement cla.s.ses: 'Everybody sit down in a circle cross-legged.' I was not even able to do that, could not so much as sit tailor-fas.h.i.+on without looking a gawky fool. My knees stuck up, and my self-confidence sank. that is given to some and not to others was a gift similar to athleticism, musicality and s.e.x appeal. In other words it had something to do with a self-confidence with the body that I had never had, a self-confidence that allowed physical relaxation and ease that themselves seemed to generate more self-confidence. This was the source of all my troubles. Fear of the games field, fear of the dance floor, athletic inept.i.tude, s.e.xual shyness, lack of coordination and grace, hatred of my face and body. This could be traced all the way back to kindergarten Music and Movement cla.s.ses: 'Everybody sit down in a circle cross-legged.' I was not even able to do that, could not so much as sit tailor-fas.h.i.+on without looking a gawky fool. My knees stuck up, and my self-confidence sank.

I had lived twenty years convinced that my body was the enemy and that all I had going for me was my brain, my quickness of tongue and my blithe facility with language, attributes that can cause people to be as much disliked as admired. They were adequate for very particular kinds of comedy performance. Verbally intricate monologues and sketches that I had written myself I could be confident in performing happily. But I lived, as I have already indicated, in dread of double-takes, slow burns, pratfalls and those other apparently essential comic techniques that seemed to me as terrifying, impenetrable and alienating as dance steps or tennis strokes. I know how infantile and silly such fears may sound, but in comedy confidence is paramount. If the performer is unsure then the audience is on edge, and that is enough to strangle laughter before it is born. I saw in Hugh, Emma, Tony and others instinctive physical gifts that I knew I did not share and was sure I could never acquire. Besides which, they could all sing and dance. Who could possibly make a career in s...o...b..siness if they lacked musical ability? All of the greats could sing. Even Peter Cook was more musical than I was. I lay awake at nights convinced that Sandy Ross and Jon Plowman would see my inadequacies at once and quietly drop me from the cast. At best they might ask me to stay on purely as a writer. Perhaps I would not mind that too much, but it would be a humiliation and one that I did not relish. A part of me I have to confess this, moronic, puerile and cheap as it may sound really did ache to be a star. I wanted to be famous, admired, stared at, known, applauded and liked.

There, I have said it. It is not the most surprising confession for a performer to make, but it is hardly the done thing to admit to such a shallow ambition. There was no question that Emma would be famous, no question at all. I knew that Hugh would make it too but I worried myself silly that I would be left out, like the last one to be picked to play for the team. Cambridge had shown me that I could make an audience laugh, but I had enjoyed the luxury of making them laugh on my terms. Now that we were in the big wide world, one which was looking towards the punkier end of the comedy spectrum, it seemed inevitable that I would be judged to be the one who didn't quite quite have what it took. Perhaps a little writing, perhaps some radio work, but nothing like the stardom that beckoned for Hugh and Emma and for Ben Elton's friend, about whom I was hearing more and more, the astonis.h.i.+ng Rik Mayall. have what it took. Perhaps a little writing, perhaps some radio work, but nothing like the stardom that beckoned for Hugh and Emma and for Ben Elton's friend, about whom I was hearing more and more, the astonis.h.i.+ng Rik Mayall.

Exactly what I most lacked this explosive comic genius most possessed: physical charisma, devastating self-a.s.surance and an astoundingly natural appeal that radiated out at the audience like a thermonuclear shockwave. He could be silly, charming, childish, vain and inconsequential in a way that simply and unequivocally delighted. You didn't question it, a.n.a.lyse it, applaud its cleverness, appreciate its social meaning or admire the work behind it, you simply adored it, as you might any natural phenomenon. Whatever gifts I possessed appeared shrivelled, pale and underdeveloped. In the comedy shower-comparison test I failed, and it hurt. Was being in the adult world like being back at school all over again? It seemed loweringly likely.

Meanwhile, I could at least throw myself into the last hurrah of the Cambridge Footlights.

Hugh, Emma, Tony, Paul, Penny and I arrived at the BBC for the televising of The Cellar Tapes at exactly the time Ben Elton, Lise Mayer and Rik Mayall were putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the at exactly the time Ben Elton, Lise Mayer and Rik Mayall were putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the Young Ones Young Ones scripts and Peter Richardson, Ade Edmondson, Rik, Dawn French, Jenny Saunders and Robbie Coltrane were preparing to shoot the Comic Strip film scripts and Peter Richardson, Ade Edmondson, Rik, Dawn French, Jenny Saunders and Robbie Coltrane were preparing to shoot the Comic Strip film Five Go Mad in Dorset Five Go Mad in Dorset. It is hardly surprising that we felt a little like the New Seekers sharing the bill with the s.e.x Pistols.

We moved deeper into the realms of the truly old-fas.h.i.+oned when we met the producer whom the BBC had allocated us. He was a thin, jerky man in his mid to late fifties who smelt strongly of whisky and unfiltered Senior Service cigarettes. Which is hardly surprising since he had no other diet. When he introduced himself, something in his name rang a distant m.u.f.fled bell.

'How do you do? Dennis Main Wilson.'

Dennis Main Wilson why was that so familiar? Dennis Main Wilson. It sounded so right. Like Chorlton-c.u.m-Hardy, Amy Semple McPherson, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x or Ortega y Ga.s.set, one of those triple names that tripped off the tongue as if one had always known them, while in truth one is never quite sure to whom or what they might refer. why was that so familiar? Dennis Main Wilson. It sounded so right. Like Chorlton-c.u.m-Hardy, Amy Semple McPherson, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x or Ortega y Ga.s.set, one of those triple names that tripped off the tongue as if one had always known them, while in truth one is never quite sure to whom or what they might refer.

Dennis Main Wilson was in fact the greatest comedy producer of his generation, perhaps of any generation. On the radio he had produced the first two series of The Goon Show The Goon Show and the first four series of and the first four series of Hanc.o.c.k's Half Hour Hanc.o.c.k's Half Hour: for those alone his grave should for ever be festooned with flowers and his memory eternally cherished. On television he was responsible for bringing us The Rag Trade The Rag Trade, Till Death Us Do Part Till Death Us Do Part, Marty Marty with the great Marty Feldman and with the great Marty Feldman and Sykes Sykes with the equally great Eric Sykes. Perhaps most crucially of all in terms of television history, he demonstrated a patience and openness to new ideas rare in grand and established programme-makers when he agreed one day to read a script presented to him by a lowly BBC scene-s.h.i.+fter. Most senior broadcasting staff can always find a way to avoid unsolicited material. Dennis was made of kindlier stuff and accepted the shyly proffered sheaf of ma.n.u.script with the beaming enthusiasm that always characterized him. The scene-s.h.i.+fter's name was John Sullivan, and his script was called with the equally great Eric Sykes. Perhaps most crucially of all in terms of television history, he demonstrated a patience and openness to new ideas rare in grand and established programme-makers when he agreed one day to read a script presented to him by a lowly BBC scene-s.h.i.+fter. Most senior broadcasting staff can always find a way to avoid unsolicited material. Dennis was made of kindlier stuff and accepted the shyly proffered sheaf of ma.n.u.script with the beaming enthusiasm that always characterized him. The scene-s.h.i.+fter's name was John Sullivan, and his script was called Citizen Smith Citizen Smith. It was produced with great success and launched the career of Robert Lindsay. Sullivan followed it up with Only Fools and Horses Only Fools and Horses, which I think one may safely call the most popular comedy in British history.

Spike Milligan, on account of Dennis's predilection for alcohol, had nicknamed him Dennis Main Drain and there is no question that he was a mockable ent.i.ty. His tweed jacket, Brylcreemed hair, scrawny neck and nicotine-stained fingers belonged to another age, an age far removed from the excitements of alternative comedy and youth entertainment that the soon-to-be-launched Channel 4 was preparing to offer the world. As a devotee of radio comedy I would have admired him whatever his character; as it is I adored him. We all did. Cautiously at first and then with gathering conviction. One thing, however, we soon discovered was essential when it came to working with Dennis Main Wilson. No matter how much he insisted upon meeting at twelve, one, two, three or four o'clock in the afternoon we had to make equally certain that the meetings should be at nine, ten or eleven in the morning. It was a simple question of productivity. The comedy department at Television Centre was on the sixth floor, with Dennis's office directly opposite the BBC Club, which was essentially a bar. Every morning at eleven thirty he would make the ten-yard journey from office to Club. A Senior Service unwinding its blue ribbon of smoke from between his fingers, a pint of bitter and a double scotch on the bar in front of him, he would enthral and absorb us with tales of Hattie Jacques, Peter Sellers and Sid James, but as the morning wore on his ability to concentrate on our little show and its looming recording date would become less and less certain, and we would begin nervously to wonder whether there would even be a studio booked, props organized or cameramen available for duty on the appointed night. Catch Dennis at nine in the morning, however, and he was a ball of fire. His fleshless body twitched and jerked, his fingers stabbed the air with each excited new idea, and his chesty, tobacco-enriched chuckle infected us all with grandiose self-belief. He gave us the impression that as far as he was concerned we were cut from the same cloth as Spike Milligan and Tony Hanc.o.c.k. Such attention and respect from one so august could only make us glow. This was perhaps counterbalanced by his complete lack of knowledge or even interest in the new wave lapping up against the ramparts. A small, disloyal, insecure part of me wondered if it wasn't like, to change the era of the musical comparison, Bobby Darin's manager a.s.suring him that rock and roll was a temporary blip. Dennis saw us as respectful inheritors of the Golden Age mantle and the new alternative comics as vandals and interlopers who were of no account. I, for such is my way part greasy sycophant desperate to please, part show-off, part genuine enthusiast played up to this with endless talk of Mabel Constanduros, Sandy Powell, Gert and Daisy, Mr Flotsam and Mr Jetsam and other music-hall radio stars for whom I had a pa.s.sion.

We rehea.r.s.ed in the BBC block popularly known as the North Acton Hilton. Each floor in this dull, impersonal tower tucked away in a dull and impersonal suburb had two sets of purpose-built rehearsal rooms and production offices. Not that I knew it then, but this soulless, sick-building-syndrome structure with its dripping, flaking and crumbling exterior, flickering fluorescent strip-lighting and smelly lifts was to be my second home for the next eight years through successive series of Blackadder Blackadder and and A Bit of Fry and Laurie A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I loved it. I loved the canteen, where you could nod h.e.l.lo to Nicholas Lyndhurst and David Jason, the kids from Grange Hill Grange Hill or the dancers from or the dancers from Top of the Pops Top of the Pops. I loved the poles on plinths in the rehearsal rooms that could be moved around to stand in for doorways and entrances. I loved the tape on the floor that marked out rooms and camera positions in different colours, like sports-hall courts. I loved looking out across the dreary roofs of west London and knowing that I was here, working for the BBC with All Creatures Great and Small All Creatures Great and Small next door and next door and Doctor Who Doctor Who the floor above. the floor above.

As we rehea.r.s.ed The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes I had no knowledge of the years and series to come, of course, and no idea that it was quite normal for technical runs to be played out in silence. Let me explain. I had no knowledge of the years and series to come, of course, and no idea that it was quite normal for technical runs to be played out in silence. Let me explain.

Multi-camera studio comedy performed in front of an audience has become rare since single-camera location shooting became the norm some years ago. Back then it was the usual mode. Outside scenes were shot on 16mm film, and everything else on those skirted rostrum studio cameras that wheel around on castors and which inspired Terry Nation to dream up the Daleks. If you watch Fawlty Towers Fawlty Towers or other comedies of the seventies and early eighties you can see the manifest, almost ludicrous difference between grainy exterior film and s.h.i.+ny interior video. No one seemed to mind then, perhaps because TV reception and resolution were poorer, perhaps because we accepted what we had always been given. or other comedies of the seventies and early eighties you can see the manifest, almost ludicrous difference between grainy exterior film and s.h.i.+ny interior video. No one seemed to mind then, perhaps because TV reception and resolution were poorer, perhaps because we accepted what we had always been given.

The schedule for recording went like this. You went out into the world and shot the exteriors that your script demanded and then you spent a week in North Acton rehearsing the rest, the studio element. It was traditional to tape the show on a Sunday, I suppose because busy actors often worked in the theatre on other nights. On Friday morning at Acton came the occasion of the Tech Run. The camera and sound crews, set, production, costume and make-up personnel would all troop into the rehearsal room and watch a run-through of the show. And this is where, in March 1982, we received the greatest blow to our comedy egos that we had yet experienced.

Silence.

Silence, the comedian's enemy.

We ran through sketch after sketch and song after song. Not a smile. Just folded arms, teeth-sucking and the occasional note scribbled on to a Xeroxed copy of the script.

When we had finished the last number and the room began to clear of technical people we went off into a corner and watched in a frightened huddle as the lighting director and number-one cameraman lingered to ask John Kilby, the director, one or two questions. When they had at last gone Dennis bounded up to us.

'Drink?'

'Oh, Dennis,' we said. 'Is it still going to happen?'

'What do you mean?'

'It was a disaster. A complete disaster. Not a smile, not a t.i.tter, nothing. They hated hated us.' us.'

Dennis smiled a long, wide smile and the phlegm in the bottom of his lungs began to hiss, bubble and growl like a coffee-bar milk steamer as he wheezed out a great laugh.

'They have a job to do, my dears,' he said. 'No one, not even the sound crew, was listening. They are looking at where the cameras go, what the edge of frame is, a thousand different things. Ha ha! You thought they were making a judgement. That's very funny, ha!' Dennis's eyes ran as he laughed and choked and gasped to the bottom of his lungs.

On Sunday we performed the show in front of an audience. An audience that was warmed up by Clive Anderson, an ex-Footlights barrister who had yet to make the decision to become a performer in front of the cameras. The recording seemed to go well, but we were not making it for the studio audience, we were making it for television viewers, and whether they would like it we would not know for months.

In the meantime the Granada show demanded our attention.

Chelsea, Coleherne Clones and Conscience Kim and I moved from Hadley Wood into a flat in Draycott Place, just off Sloane Square in Chelsea, where the newly enroyaled Lady Diana's friends flitted between the Peter Jones department store, the General Trading Company and Partridge's delicatessen, all rigged out in identical green quilted Husky jackets and high Laura Ashley collars. Their boyfriends drove Golf GTi cabriolets, so prevalent in SW3 that they were nicknamed haemorrhoids ('sooner or later every a.r.s.ehole gets one'). Hooray Henries were getting proudly and hog-whimperingly drunk in the newly fas.h.i.+onable wine bars while their younger brothers wound silk scarves about their long pale necks and drooped like lilies, hoping to look as winning and doomed as Anthony Andrews in Brideshead Revisited Brideshead Revisited. Pubs were beginning to ding and thrum to the sound of s.p.a.ce Invaders and from the open doors of the hairdressing salons and into the tumult of the King's Road pumped the sound of Adam and the Ants' 'Goody Two Shoes', Dexy's Midnight Runners' 'Come On Eileen' and Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?' Someone had found the k.n.o.b marked 'eighties' and turned it up full.

Just around the corner from Draycott Place in Tryon Street stood, and still stands, a safe, twee and very Chelsea gay pub called the Queen's Head. It was in the snug there that I first heard about something called GRID. Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. It all sounded most peculiar. Gay people in America were dying and 'you mark my words, dear,' said the barman, 'it's coming over here.'

The gay world was expressing itself fiercely and freely at this time. Larry Kramer's f.a.ggots f.a.ggots was the book of the age, portraying a world of Fire Island excess where happy hedonists frothed, creamed and pumped away their endless weekends of drug-driven partying, succ.u.mbing (and indeed sucking c.u.m) to intense physical gratification in eye-popping scenes of pitiless, guiltless detail. A lifestyle free from moral, personal or medical consequences. No restraint was shown, except perhaps a leather one swinging from the ceiling in which unimaginable acts would be perpetrated. I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party. It was a strange feeling to be in a minority within a minority. Most gay people aspired, or appeared to aspire, to that whole scene and to the Village People character types that defined it, especially the plaid-s.h.i.+rted, moustachioed look that was called the Clone. Squadrons of these tight-jeaned, heavy-booted individuals could be seen ma.s.sed inside the Coleherne Arms in Earls Court. I found the manliness, humourlessness and physical urgency that emanated like cheap musk from such people and places alarming and depressing. Not that I was even faintly drawn to these preposterous Tom of Finland caricatures with their muscle vests, leather caps and joyless stares. My dream partner was a friendly, dreamy, funny young man with whom I could walk, talk, laugh, cuddle and play. Nonetheless I did go to places like the Coleherne and the newly opened Heaven, which proclaimed itself to be the largest disco in Europe. I went because ... well, because it was what you did in those days if you were gay and in your twenties. To feel a hundred eyes instantly scan and dismiss me was humiliating and shaming and reminded me of being checked out in the school showers. Rejection, contempt and lack of interest were all instant, careless and unequivocal. Thumping music, the sniffing of poppers, the thras.h.i.+ng on the dance-floor and those endless raking, questing, needy eyes prohibited any conversation or laughter. I was completely uninterested in picking anyone up or in being picked up myself and I certainly had no desire to dance but I suppose I thought that if I went often enough I would somehow break through and start to like it, in the same way I had broken through with unsugared tea. I never did break through with the gay scene. I learned to hate the discos and bars and everything they stood for. I am not sure that I can successfully claim that it was moral repugnance that fuelled my hate, I think it was the remorseless battering to my was the book of the age, portraying a world of Fire Island excess where happy hedonists frothed, creamed and pumped away their endless weekends of drug-driven partying, succ.u.mbing (and indeed sucking c.u.m) to intense physical gratification in eye-popping scenes of pitiless, guiltless detail. A lifestyle free from moral, personal or medical consequences. No restraint was shown, except perhaps a leather one swinging from the ceiling in which unimaginable acts would be perpetrated. I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party. It was a strange feeling to be in a minority within a minority. Most gay people aspired, or appeared to aspire, to that whole scene and to the Village People character types that defined it, especially the plaid-s.h.i.+rted, moustachioed look that was called the Clone. Squadrons of these tight-jeaned, heavy-booted individuals could be seen ma.s.sed inside the Coleherne Arms in Earls Court. I found the manliness, humourlessness and physical urgency that emanated like cheap musk from such people and places alarming and depressing. Not that I was even faintly drawn to these preposterous Tom of Finland caricatures with their muscle vests, leather caps and joyless stares. My dream partner was a friendly, dreamy, funny young man with whom I could walk, talk, laugh, cuddle and play. Nonetheless I did go to places like the Coleherne and the newly opened Heaven, which proclaimed itself to be the largest disco in Europe. I went because ... well, because it was what you did in those days if you were gay and in your twenties. To feel a hundred eyes instantly scan and dismiss me was humiliating and shaming and reminded me of being checked out in the school showers. Rejection, contempt and lack of interest were all instant, careless and unequivocal. Thumping music, the sniffing of poppers, the thras.h.i.+ng on the dance-floor and those endless raking, questing, needy eyes prohibited any conversation or laughter. I was completely uninterested in picking anyone up or in being picked up myself and I certainly had no desire to dance but I suppose I thought that if I went often enough I would somehow break through and start to like it, in the same way I had broken through with unsugared tea. I never did break through with the gay scene. I learned to hate the discos and bars and everything they stood for. I am not sure that I can successfully claim that it was moral repugnance that fuelled my hate, I think it was the remorseless battering to my amour propre amour propre, my ego.

Problems with the physical self, you may have noticed by now, are central to my life story. The reckless feeding of my physical appet.i.tes on the one hand and the miserable dislike and fear of my physical appearance on the other have all been overseen by a pathological personal theology that has for most of my life robbed me of any true ease. I do not wish to sound self-pitying or to privilege myself with unique sensitivity or susceptibility to distress in these matters, but there is almost no moment in the day when I do not feel myself to be intensely guilty of numberless trespa.s.ses. Drinking too much coffee, not concentrating sufficiently hard, not answering emails quickly enough. Not being in touch with people I have promised to be in touch with. Going to the gym too infrequently. Eating too much. Drinking too much. Declining invitations to speak at charity dinners. Being slow in reading and commenting on entirely unsolicited scripts. These are almost meaningless offences; they are pathetic little particles of plankton in the deep ocean of sin to be sure, but my feelings are as craven, cringing and confessional as the most self-abasing Calvinists in their most prostrate and abject furies of repentance. I do not believe there is a G.o.d or a judgement day or a redeeming saviour, but I go through all the shame, trembling and self-castigation of the most pious and hysterical ascetic without the cheap promise of forgiveness and a divine cuddle in recompense.

Good gracious, I know how this reads. To listen to the neuroses of a spoilt, over-paid, over-praised, over-pampered celebrity must be unendurable. For me to wallow in the luxury of being worried only by such insignificant piffle while so many in the world suffer the traumas, terrors and torments of poverty, hunger, disease and war. Even here in the developed world there are plenty who have financial and familial worries enough to be to say the least unsympathetic to my plight. I know know. My G.o.d, do you think I do not know how monstrously self-indulgent, narcissistic and childish I must sound in so many ears? That is the point. My real dissatisfaction is with my dissatisfaction. How dare I be so discontent? How dare I? Or being discontent why cannot I shut up about it?

I know that money, power, prestige and fame do not bring happiness. If history teaches us anything it teaches us that. You know it. Everybody agrees this to be a manifest truth so self-evident as to need no repet.i.tion. What is strange to me is that, despite the fact that the world knows this, it does not want want to know it and it chooses almost always to behave as if it were not true. It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise. And I am all for that. For the greater part of the time I will smile and agree that I am the luckiest devil alive and that I am as happy as a bee in pollen. Most of the time. But not when writing a book like this. Not when it is understood that I will attempt to be as honest with you as possible. About other people, as I have said, I may palter and pretend, but the business of autobiography is at least to strive for some element of self-revelation and candour. And so I have to confess that, foolish as I know it sounds, I spend much of my life imprisoned by a ruthless, unreasoning conscience that tortures me and denies me happiness. How much is Conscience and how much is Cyclothymia, the particular flavour of bipolarity with which I have been diagnosed and to which we will (hurray!) not return in this book, I cannot tell. I am content to shuttle between all available moral, psychological, mythical, spiritual, neural, hormonal, genetic, dietary and environmental explanations for unhappiness. to know it and it chooses almost always to behave as if it were not true. It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise. And I am all for that. For the greater part of the time I will smile and agree that I am the luckiest devil alive and that I am as happy as a bee in pollen. Most of the time. But not when writing a book like this. Not when it is understood that I will attempt to be as honest with you as possible. About other people, as I have said, I may palter and pretend, but the business of autobiography is at least to strive for some element of self-revelation and candour. And so I have to confess that, foolish as I know it sounds, I spend much of my life imprisoned by a ruthless, unreasoning conscience that tortures me and denies me happiness. How much is Conscience and how much is Cyclothymia, the particular flavour of bipolarity with which I have been diagnosed and to which we will (hurray!) not return in this book, I cannot tell. I am content to shuttle between all available moral, psychological, mythical, spiritual, neural, hormonal, genetic, dietary and environmental explanations for unhappiness.

I hope then that you will excuse the unstartling revelation that I am often tortured and unhappy. Most of this unhappiness would appear to derive from my physical self being either disgusting in its lack of appeal or demanding in its requirements of calories and other damaging substances. In the light of this I will pursue further the point I was making about the Coleherne and related horrors of the eighties scene.

The gay ident.i.ty, if I can be excused for so squirm-worthy a phrase, drew attention to the physical in those days more than I think it does now. Heaven (both of them: the address in the clouds and the club under the arches of Charing Cross) knows there is still plenty of body fascism about today, but I think it is being accurate rather than charitable to say that the community has grown up a little. Being gay thirty years ago, however, seemed overwhelmingly to be about dancing, cruising, narcissism and anonymous s.e.x. I was gay and therefore I was supposed to care for and be capable of those things too. My problem was twofold. Firstly n.o.body seemed to be remotely attracted to me, and secondly I wasn't even interested anyway in all this heavy dance-floor heaving and casual erotic encountering.

Would it have been different if some of those harsh nighthawk glares had melted with desire when I came in through the door? Might I then have consented to dance the s.e.xual dance? Did I hate my own face and body with such a hot hate only because I thought others did? Was I really doing no more than getting my retaliation in first, like children who decide that chess or history or tennis are boring, but only because they don't have an instant apt.i.tude?

Blaise Pascal said that if Cleopatra's nose had been a little shorter, the whole history of the earth would have been different. If mine had been a little cuter then maybe I would have thrown myself into a life of carnal abandon at just that period in history when there were trillions of microscopic reasons for that being the most fatal game to play. So perhaps it is as well that I was unappealing.

If you are distressed or irritated to read me describe myself as such, then let it be understood that, while at that time I had no confidence in being anything else, I am fully aware that plenty of undeniably less good-looking men seemed to be getting all the s.e.x they required. Self-image was a lot to do with it, but there can be no disputing the misery caused by those hard eyes running up and down my body for a scorchingly humiliating instant before flicking away with contempt towards the next person coming through the door. Of course I know those glaring gazing gays were just as, perhaps even more, insecure than me. They too were getting their retaliation in first. But to think such unsmiling coldness is s.e.xy ... I am very proud and very happy to be gay, but I would be lying if I did not say that much about the world that gay people inhabited in those days sickened, repelled and frightened me.

As much as anything it was to be dismissed without being known that p.r.i.c.kled so fiercely. Without labouring the point, it was behaviour that I thought not far from racism, s.e.xism or any other kind of prejudice or sn.o.bbery. 'Because you are not cute I do not want to know you' was to me hardly different from suggesting, 'Because you are gay I dislike you' or 'Because you are Jewish, I dislike you' or, come to that, 'Because you went to Cambridge I dislike you.' Of course, anyone who believes themselves to be a victim of such discrimination ought to be sure. We first have to dismiss the worrying possibility that a true interpretation of another's antipathy might be 'Because you are a boring a.r.s.ehole I dislike you', a judgement from which there is little hope of comfortable escape.

Kim enjoyed the gay world more than I did. He was not, of course, fooled by it, but I think he was more at ease in it than I could ever be. He also had more opportunity to experience it, for I was beginning to be so consumed by work that such things as clubs and pubs were receding into the background for me. This new Granada comedy series was going to take me away from London for long periods of time.

Colonel and Coltrane It was hard not to like Manchester. Being called 'love', 'chuck' or a 'daft barmcake' can only delight a southerner used to the lonely and unsmiling lovelessness of London and the south-east. Granada lodged us at the grand and luxurious Midland Hotel and doled out to us the most unbelievably handsome per diem per diem cash payments in little brown packets. I had never had so much ready money in my life. We had had three months to write material and now we were here to sift, select and record. cash payments in little brown packets. I had never had so much ready money in my life. We had had three months to write material and now we were here to sift, select and record.

Hugh and I had been what is the word? Horror-struck? Staggered? Mortified? Shamed? Some mixture of all those perhaps to discover that our slow, mournful and insecure rate of writing had been trumped and trampled on by the one-man whirlwind of industry, creativity and prodigality that was Benjamin Charles Elton. For every one page of uncertain and unfinished sketch comedy that we held apologetically up for judgement, Ben produced fifty. That is no exaggeration. Where our comedy was etiolated, b.u.t.toned-up and embarra.s.sed, his was wild, energetic, colourful and confident to the point of c.o.c.kiness. While we would read ours out with a sorrowful cough and somehow framed in self-deprecating inverted commas, Ben would perform his, playing every part, with undisguised pleasure and demented relish. Despite our complete sense of humiliation and defeat we did laugh and we did unreservedly admire his astonis.h.i.+ng talent and the unabashed zest with which he threw himself into performance.

Ben had instantly spotted the performing genius of Emma Thompson and warmed to the big-eyed hopelessness that Hugh could project in characters as well as his authority and range. In me he saw a crusty relict of Empire and created a character called Colonel Sodom, who might, I suppose, be regarded as a rather coa.r.s.ely sketched forerunner of Blackadder Goes Forth Blackadder Goes Forth's General Melchett. Another aspect of my limited performance scope that appealed to him resulted in Doctor de Quincey, a casually peremptory and callous doctor who reappeared some years later in Ben's comedy drama series Happy Families. Happy Families.

Single-handedly Ben seemed to have written every episode of the series, which was called, after much disputation, There's Nothing to Worry About. We shot it in and around Manchester, the director, Stuart Orme, using state of the art Electronic News Gathering equipment, which is to say new lightweight video cameras whose flexibility allowed the production to save money on set building, but at the price of a substandard look and soundtrack. Hugh and I managed to write a few sketches that made it through to performance, as a sop to our pride we suspected, one being a long sequence that involved a pair of characters called Alan and Bernard, who had featured in the Footlights Charades sketch and who would pop up again as Gordon and Stewart in A Bit of Fry and Laurie A Bit of Fry and Laurie. But all in all it was Ben's show, for good or ill.

It is no unfair criticism of anyone to say that the results were uneven. Richard Armitage, the agent who had taken me, Hugh and Emma under his wing, was loud in his dismay, disgust and disapproval. He was particularly revolted by Colonel Sodom's exploding bottom. The Colonel ate strong curries and in a series of shots I was seen striding through the streets of Didsbury all but propelled along the pavement by pyrotechnic special-effect farts. I think there was even a close-up of the seat of my pinstripe trousers bursting open with a smoking star-shaped bang. Richard muttered about this for weeks. He felt that the stylish, intelligent brand of graduate comedy for which he hoped we would be known, and on which he planned to build our careers, was being crippled at birth by a foul-mouthed c.o.c.kney street urchin with a sewer for a mind and he wanted none of it. Who knows what grumbling behind-the-scenes machinations took place. Richard may even have tried to get us out of our contract. Steve Morrison, the executive producer, and Sandy Ross stayed loyal to Ben, quite rightly recognizing his ferocious and fertile talent. They were aware nonetheless that There's Nothing to Worry About There's Nothing to Worry About had flaws, and their solution was to bring in a new cast member. Paul Shearer, through no fault of his own, left the show. As one who wrote less material even than Hugh and me he was, I suppose, considered dispensable. Paul's place was taken by a Glasgow Art School graduate called Anthony McMillan, who had just changed his name to Robbie Coltrane. had flaws, and their solution was to bring in a new cast member. Paul Shearer, through no fault of his own, left the show. As one who wrote less material even than Hugh and me he was, I suppose, considered dispensable. Paul's place was taken by a Glasgow Art School graduate called Anthony McMillan, who had just changed his name to Robbie Coltrane.

Big, loud and hilarious, Robbie combined the style and manners of a Brooklyn bus-driver, a fifties rock and roller, a motor mechanic and a Gorbals gangster. Somehow they all fitted together perfectly into one consistent character. He terrified the life out of me, and the only way I could compensate for that was to pretend to find him impossibly attractive and to rub my legs up against him and moan with ecstasy.

'You cheeky wee f.u.c.ker,' he would say and somehow tolerate me.

The only time in my life I ever wore a donkey jacket. Alfresco. Alfresco.

A t.w.a.t in tweed and cravat: inexcusably slappable. Alfresco. Alfresco.

Robbie has since said in an interview that he found Hugh and me to be arrogant, off-puttingly over-confident Establishment figures who looked down our well-bred noses at his blowsy, vulgar intrusion like thoroughbred racehorses s.h.i.+vering their fastidious flanks at the presence in their stables of an unwelcome donkey. I am not quoting him exactly, but that is certainly the gist of what he said. Whether he made this up to pad out a boring interview session or whether he truly believes it and remembers it that way, I cannot say. I always get on amicably, indeed affectionately, with Robbie on the rare occasions that I see him these days, but I have never dared raise the subject of that interview. They bring us back to the endless, and perhaps arid, problem of affect and appearance, the question of the figures we cut with others despite what we may feel inside. We see everyone else socially armed with great clubs while all we have hidden behind our backs is a pitiful cotton bud. I know how much Hugh and I were suffering a tormented sense of inadequacy, how much we felt out of place and how much we were embarra.s.sed by our d.a.m.nable public-school and Cambridge backgrounds. I also know that we were too proud and too well-brought-up, or I was certainly, to go around slouching and mooching with hang-dog expressions that begged for petting and pity. It is, at some sort of stretch, possible that we hid our feelings of hopelessness so well that Robbie could, in all conscience, claim that we came over as poncey, preening p.r.i.c.ks, but I honestly cannot believe it likely. Perhaps it suited Robbie to imagine himself as a lowborn grease-monkey endowed with natural, home-grown street talent, forced into a world of pale sn.o.bbery and mincing middle-cla.s.s privilege. In fact, of course, Robbie is the son of a doctor and went to school at Glenalmond College, perhaps Scotland's most elite private seat of learning and subject of the excellent 2008 doc.u.mentary Pride and Privilege Pride and Privilege. The 13th Duke of Argyll, the Marquess of Lothian, Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia and the 9th Earl of Elgin, Viceroy of India, are numbered amongst its eximious alumni. That he managed to enter Glasgow School of Art as Anthony Robert McMillan with an accent like Prince Charles's and emerge the other end as Robbie Coltrane with an accent like Jimmy Boyle's is a fine achievement. I sometimes think I should have tried to do something similar.

There's Nothing to Worry About had emerged on screen, exploding bottoms and all, in June of 1982 in the Granada region only. We went back down to London to write in July, August and September for the new series which was to be called had emerged on screen, exploding bottoms and all, in June of 1982 in the Granada region only. We went back down to London to write in July, August and September for the new series which was to be called Alfresco Alfresco.

Hugh, Emma, Ben, self, Siobhan and Paul: There's Nothing to Worry About, There's Nothing to Worry About, Granada TV, 1982. Oh, but there was... Granada TV, 1982. Oh, but there was...

Computer 1 One free afternoon in Manchester I had walked to the Arndale Centre and drifted from shop to shop. In a branch of Lasky's I found myself staring in perplexity at a group of teenagers cl.u.s.tered around a display stand. I approached and looked over their shoulders ...

Half an hour later I was fiddling with the back of the television in my Midland Hotel bedroom. After ten frustrating and confused minutes Ceefax-style text appeared on the screen.

BBC Computer 32K BASIC.

It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair, the details of which will bore you dreadfully. I shall try not to linger on the subject too long, but the relations.h.i.+p was and is too important to me for it to be consigned to a quick sentence. Most of my spare hours were now spent in front of this transcendently lovely (to me) machine, an Acorn BBC Micro B computer. At that time microcomputers relied on two household appliances to work properly: a television for display and a ca.s.sette tape-recorder for recording and loading programs. The Lasky's salesman had persuaded me to buy a program called Wordwise, which came on a ROM chip that you plugged into one of four slots on the circuit board. The other s.p.a.ces were for the operating system and the BASIC programming language. With Wordwise plugged into the first slot the computer magically started up as a word-processor. I could attach it by a wide-ribboned parallel connector to a Brother electric typewriter which now became a slave printer. I cannot explain my fascination and delight. With exultation I would show my friends the computer, the programs I had written and the printer printing out. Everybody cooed and wowed obediently, but I could tell they were not moved in the same way that I was. It puzzled me that I should be so captivated by this new world when others were so relatively unengaged. Certainly the system was clever, one could do remarkable things with it, and most people were impressed in the standard 'Tch, whatever will they think of next?' way but for me the excitement was about so much more than function. I have long since given up trying to understand this undying obsession, which rapidly took on all the form, manner and behaviour of a cla.s.sic addiction. I pa.s.sed most of what spare time I had with my head buried in dedicated microcomputer magazines or haunting the Tottenham Court Road on the look-out for new peripherals. I would stay up at the keyboard until three, four or five in the morning writing pointless programs or attempting to master useless techniques. Within a very short time I had filled my corner of the Chelsea flat with a daisy-wheel printer, a plotter, a dedicated RGB monitor and an add-on for an extra processor and floppy disks. My lifelong battle to control cabling began at this time. All the cables I have ever owned would stretch to the moon and back. Except they would not be able to because they would fail to connect up with each other. Anyone can write a credible story in which humans can teleport, travel in time and make themselves invisible. A future in which there are cable compatibility standards, that would be real science fiction.

Cables, monitors, printers, books, magazines, disks all these were costing me money. Money that I did not have.

Richard Armitage had told me with an expansive wave of a cigar-brandis.h.i.+ng hand that if ever I was running low, his a.s.sistant, Lorraine Hamilton, would send me cheques to cover my expenses. These would count as advances against future earnings. Despite Kim's relative wealth and his easy generosity, I had run up a debt of several thousand pounds with Richard by the August of 1982 and was beginning to worry that I would never earn enough to be able to pay him back.

Commercia